This Friday night we open our 2016 season a little later... and a little bigger than originally planned at Jacksonville Speedway. With mother nature canceling our original opener 2 weeks ago, and a week off last week, we open this Friday with 4 open wheel classes featuring:
Neal Tire MOWA Sprint Car Series presented by Casey's General Stores
Lucas Oil POWRi National Midget Series
Speedway Motors POWRi Outlaw Micros
POWRi Division II Midgets
Over the past 3-4 years we have made the Winged Sprint/National Midget combination a cornerstone of many of our big events at Jacksonville. In those years it's hard to remember a race that wasn't an instant classic. Chris Bell and Bryan Clauson colliding at the line tangled together to take the checkers at the 2014 Herb Barlow Memorial... Chris Bell driving off every wall in the joint and doing an off-road dune buggy jump during last year's POWRi Midget Week... and last season's finale at the Ron Milton Race of Champions where the MOWA point championship came down to a final night duel between Jerrod Hull and Paul Nienheiser... these shows feature great racing, great drivers and great memories.
We hope you join us this Friday at Jacksonville Speedway for our 2016 season opener. The weather looks to be great.
Pit gates open at 3:00, Grandstands at 5:00, Hot laps 6:20 with racing at 7:00. The MOWA Sprints will be using their new qualifying format.
Give me 'till about Wednesday for us to get a final order of events together. Several moving parts we have to map out. MOWA now qualifies - but no longer runs a dash so we have to scratch all the turn-arounds and potential double duty drivers on paper.
We usually alternate between sprints and midgets going first. I think it's the midgets turn, but we're going to try to run MOWA first since they burnt through a lot of tires last weekend and let midgets go first next time. Hopefully the clock allows us a quick track prep session before the midget feature.
